

11 Apps to Help You Edit Your Selfies

These apps have the power to clean up your face and make you look amazing.

There have been hundreds of thinkpieces written on the selfie revolution, and we're not going to come down on either side of the great debate. If you like taking self-portraits and sharing them on social media, more power to you. You're not alone: millions of selfies are snapped every single day, all over the world.

But what if your phone's built-in camera isn't capturing the inner beauty you know you possess? You might need some help in the form of software. A thriving industry of photo-editing apps has risen in the wake of Instagram's success. Most of them are pretty all-purpose, designed to help you touch up all kinds of photos, from landscapes to close-ups.

Selfies, however, need something a little more specific. Instagram filters can't get rid of zits or wrinkles, but these apps have the power to clean up your face and make you look amazing. Here's our rundown of the 11 best apps to polish your selfies before you post. Just don't try to use all of them at once. The resulting tear in the spacetime continuum could doom us all, like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. No selfie is worth the extinction of all humanity.

1. Perfect365

When your software is the one allegedly used by the Kardashian sisters, you know it has some serious selfie mojo. Perfect365 is a free app available on iPhone, Android, and even Windows phones that boasts an impressive 20 editing tools to make your self-portraits star quality. All of the basics are here—it's trivial to smooth your skin to eliminate acne and wrinkles, and bags under your eyes vanish in a snap—but the more advanced functionality is pretty impressive. You can actually adjust the structure of your face, thinning your jawline and increasing your eye size. The app's makeup templates are also quite robust, offering a wide variety of looks. (iOS, Android, Windows Store)

2. CreamCam

Yes, the name sounds like something they use to track production at the Hostess Twinkies factory, but serious selfie addicts know that CreamCam is one of the best specialty apps for skin renewal and repair. The user interface is incredibly simple; just swipe your finger to adjust the image's brightness and blur, smoothing away any unwanted artifacts on your face. It's certainly not as robust as others on the list—you can't work on multiple photos at once, for instance—but it handles itself very well, and there's nothing stopping you from taking that creamed-up image and importing it into a second selfie app for a little more love. (iOS, Android)

3. ModiFace Photo Editor

ModiFace Photo Editor
Most of these apps work on a very surface-oriented level, using simple algorithms to reduce "noise" like blemishes and wrinkles on the face. But what if you're unhappy with something a little more deep? ModiFace Photo Editor does some serious heavy lifting, giving you tools to actually transform the structure of your face. Eye enlargement is standard on selfie apps, but ModiFace also lets you tinker with the structure of your nose, the plumpness of your lips and the curvature of your jaw. Throw in dozens of makeup effects and you have a serious tool for burnishing your selfies. (iOS, Android)

4. Facetune

This incredibly robust app might be the answer to your unflattering photo woes. Facetune contains a suite of powerful tools that let you smooth out blemishes and wrinkles, whiten teeth, and get rid of gray hair. If you need some heavy lifting, the Reshape tool lets you actually make structural changes to your face in the photograph. You can even adjust focus and depth of field to blur out anything that's not you. It's the most expensive app on this list at $3.99, but it's powerful enough to take care of just about any flaw in your selfie. The only real drawback is that it can be tough to learn how to use it to its full potential. (iOS ($3.99 at Apple.com) , Android)

5. Bestie

Many of the apps in this list let you really pull out the stops to modify your selfies way past the point of recognition. Bestie, from app makers Camera360, is more about keeping it real. Yes, it lets you clean up your skin like other photo editors, but what's interesting here is the array of filters, each named in honor of a famous woman. Unlike the useless nightmare that is 50 percent of Instagram's offerings (we're looking at you, Kelvin), each of Bestie's pre-sets work to enhance natural skin tones and hair colors, not replace them. (iOS, Android)

6. Photowonder

Widely considered the secret to successful selfies, Photowonder is used by over 100 million people. Unlike other photo-editing apps, which offer a diverse suite of tools suited for many different kinds of pictures, Photowonder is all about the human face. Sure, you can crop and color correct, but the real money here is in the "More Beautiful" tab, which lets users slim their faces, clear up blemishes, and even enlarge the size of their breasts. Assuming you're a girl. Dudes don't get an option for bigger biceps. The end result can look a little plastic, but for a one-click option Photowonder does the job. (iOS, Android)

7. Spring

Most of these apps are very face-centric, which makes sense. If you've got a limited amount of screen space, you want to show off your most distinctive feature. But if you're into full-body selfies, Spring is the app for you. This product is all about pushing you into a conventionally attractive shape by slimming your body, making you taller and reshaping your face. Mark the position of your face and the two sides of your body and the remarkably powerful algorithms will allow you to adjust it without leaving tell-tale distortions in the background of the photo. You can also make your body wider, but it doesn't work as well. (iOS, Android)

8. YouCam Perfect Selfie

YouCam Perfect Selfie
The YouCam suite of photo apps are remarkably robust for free programs, and their selfie-centered creation works exceptionally well. Start out by going over your skin with the airbrushing tool to make it look flawless, then use the custom filters to get rid of unwanted shine and glare. Unlike many other apps, YouCam can work its magic on multiple faces in the same picture, so group selfies shine. One feature that pulls it apart from the pack is intelligent object detection—background objects can be automatically blurred or removed. Throw in tons of stickers and other decorations for laughs and you've got a top-flight selfie app. (iOS, Android)

9. Beauty Plus

Beauty Plus
This app is very popular in Japan and Thailand for smoothing out selfies, and it produces fairly high-quality results. You have to take your photo from inside the app for it to work—you can't import from your camera roll—but the algorithms do a very solid job of smoothing out your pores, giving you a healthier complexion and reducing wrinkles. There isn't any way to color-correct within the app, though, so if you're not taking selfies in natural light you can get some weird results. It's also not free, but $1.99 is pretty reasonable for what it does. (iOS, Android)

10. CamMe

Most of the apps on this list are used after the fact, but CamMe is a notable exception. When you take a selfie, you're kind of stuck with at least one arm reaching out of the frame to hold your phone and push in the button. That can result in some unnatural and unflattering poses, to say the least. CamMe uses a cool image-recognition technology that lets you put your phone on a stand and take shots from a distance by opening and closing your fist. That triggers a three second timer that counts down to your hands-free shot. Pretty sweet and could make selfie sticks obsolete. (iOS)

11. Selfie

Yes, there's an app that's just called "Selfie." The makers could have just gone with name recognition to get downloads, but they actually created a full-featured photo app with some very interesting gimmicks. Do you find pressing your iPhone's camera button annoying? Selfie lets you map picture-taking to the volume control for a better grip. The standard skin cleaning algorithms are here, but you can also adjust the bronze and white levels to give yourself a digital tan or a Goth look. (iOS)

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K. Thor Jensen

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